This video has been nominated as a duplicate of this video by chicchorea. If this nomination is seconded with *isdupe, the video will be killed and its votes transferred to the original.

*dupeof http://videosift.com/video/Pixies-and-Placebo-Where-Is-My-Mind-Live

Not sure exactly what the syntax of dupeof is but...there you go.

haha! ♥

i won't get into the bipolar stuff again, because you already know what i think. instead i want to touch on something you mentioned. in clinical psychology, it has long been known that the patient-practioner relationship (or whatever you'd like to call it, "therapeutic alliance" etc) is beneficial. in essence, it is an instantiation of a placebo-like effect. a patient forms (or already has) expectations about treatment outcomes, and these expectations do in fact produce effects (through a number of mechanisms -- i'll spare you the thesis).

as a scientist, but also a caring member of the human race, this creates a dilemma.

on the one hand, i feel it is important to point out the potential harm of alternative medicine, because we know its effects, if any, are placebo -- and placebo effects are neither consistent nor universal. in other words, you have a better chance of fortuitous outcome with scientifically proven medicine -- medicine that has been rigorously tested against placebos.

on the other hand, the fact that placebo effects produce measurable improvements across a wide range of illnesses raises important questions. what qualifies as a real treatment? what separates a real treatment from an unreal treatment? why should treatments that improve, heal, or cure people be treated as inferior because their underlying mechanism is psychological rather than pharmacological? is deception ever morally acceptable?

when you think about it, the kinds of rituals that produce these "common factor" effects will be exacerbated in alternative medicine -- because there IS no active substance. but far from being null and void, these rituals can lead to improvement (in certain situations, the boundaries of which we do not clearly understand because, as i've opined before: science is hard; science of human behaviour is fucking hard).

[disclaimer: i use 'placebo effect' in a very broad sense to mean more than what most people would consider it to mean. really i should be using 'expectancy effect' but people unfamiliar with the literature might be even more confused by that.]

>> ^enoch:

p.s:dont feel bad trashing this dudes videos.berticus has to hold his down from exploding when i post one of this guys vids.

>> ^criticalthud:

for instance, in the US, acupuncture is "alternative".. but drugging the fuck out of your kids isn't.
in china, the reverse is true. are we more correct than the chinese? guess it depends on where you live and just how arrogant you are.


Acupuncture is "alternative" because there isn't good evidence that it's more effective than placebo. Also, the Chinese have long accepted modern medicine. What you call "the reverse", that "western" medicine is viewed as an alternative in China, is not true.

Damnit, I was switching providers so I have to wait a few days to see it; but, yeah the preview looked funny so I'm glad someone is giving it a thumbs up.

"The Placebo Effect" was great as well. I never thought a Regis joke would kill me like at the end. That episode was pretty good. I've noticed that this last part of the season that just starting is getting much better.

/I like the wee-baby-Shamus story as well.

>> ^Lawdeedaw:

Or maybe God does care about those smart enough to rely on evidence, and he uses the double blind placebo? Like I said, follow my word, and be damned. Be smart enough to please me, and be saved. Wouldn't that be some shit? And for those who say, "Oh, but that would make God a liar!" Yeah, so fucking what? I mean, why should "god" tell the truth when truth/lie is a mere means to an end?
Oh, and "Love," and "Truth," is no more a virtue than faith...


Then me as an Atheist, I'm safe. However, if I ever arrived in a "heaven" like that, I will never be happy knowing that others are lost or being punished FOREVER while I enjoy my "heaven". This is the same for ANY God or "heaven":

I would tell that God this, "Go fuck yourself!".

But, anyway...

Or maybe God does care about those smart enough to rely on evidence, and he uses the double blind placebo? Like I said, follow my word, and be damned. Be smart enough to please me, and be saved. Wouldn't that be some shit? And for those who say, "Oh, but that would make God a liar!" Yeah, so fucking what? I mean, why should "god" tell the truth when truth/lie is a mere means to an end?

Oh, and "Love," and "Truth," is no more a virtue than faith...

Placebos are a joke unto themselves as all testing so far has been done in a scenario were psychology can be manipulated and pathology is fixed.

If you offer a placebo to someone with REAL chronic pain they will throw it back at you, or be back the next day telling you it did nothing or helped within a normal range of perception (I think it's usually 10% or so; the more time you add the higher that percentage gets, eventually proving a placebo correct or completely wrong no matter what). Most of the studies look at conditions that are not pathological (or could barely be described as a true medical condition; it's usually mental health studies were the conditions barely exist if at all). Like a simple headache, but not a gunshot, cancer, or a cluster headache. Placebo study is a psychological study. No real doctor is going to screw over someone with pancreatic cancer with a placebo "radiation treatment". No real doctor will use a placebo as it's illegal. The very definition of placebo tells you why.

/Not trying to come off to snippy, but I have chronic pain and a placebo would be a day and night experience to me. Most will tell you the same thing. Example: a high morphine dose vs. a fake one. In 15 to 30 minutes your patient will be back, pissed, and emotionally/mentally upset. Placebos are meant for specific uses in testing not an actual treatment; as they do nothing if it is pathological, duh.

//edit: Yes, I know we don't know everything yet. Especially, how the mind interprets and "saves" it's data. Psychology is very young compared to other fields, but neuroscience is helping it catch up FAST. This is where you'll find placebo studies that go no where. (Placebos only work on pain that is thought of and borderline in the first place...)
///Also a few clarifications.

>> ^bareboards2:

Besides, even if you don't subscribe to the possibility of change on an energetic level, you must know about the power of placebos. Just think of alternative medicine as Structured Placebo. Placebos work. It has been proven.


The measure for medicine that works is that it exhibits a response significantly stronger than the placebo response. Some placebos exhibit stronger responses than others, e.g. using larger sugar pills over smaller ones, using toothpicks instead of acupuncture needles. But the differences are only a few percentage points, not enough to qualify as a working remedy. Alternative remedies are all about how you administer the placebo, not what you're giving them, just making people feel better so that their body has time to heal naturally over time. So long as the body is capable of recovering on its own that is.
If gullible people are willing to pay over the odds for something they could live without, there will be an industry selling placebos. But unregulated, greed tends to prevale and wild claims abound of placebos that cure e.g. cancer, can prove tragically fraudulent.
There is room for the unknown in medicine, undiscovered natural remedies that actually work, but that place is in medical trials. Alternative medicine that refuses to submit to such trials isn't worth the sugar it's coated in.

@enon.

Please read the quote below from ryanbennitt.

As a scientist (I presume you have a scientific frame of reference) you should know that we don't know everything. When I was in elementary school, there were no quarks. Now there are quarks.

You must know that there are things we don't yet have the ability to measure.

Besides, even if you don't subscribe to the possibility of change on an energetic level, you must know about the power of placebos. Just think of alternative medicine as Structured Placebo. Placebos work. It has been proven.

>> ^ryanbennitt:

As has been said on many occasions, alternative medicine that has been proven to work is just called, yep, you guessed it, medicine. The alternative to taking medicine that works is taking something that doesn't work.

>> ^Stormsinger:

Got to agree with Deano... Definitely not my kind of music (and the Sift is probably the only way I'd have ever heard her), but she's one hell of a singer.
I may have to add a small branch to my musical tastes again, just for her.


It's not mine either, I'm more a Muse, Placebo, Massive Attack kinda girl. But as you both say, it's the phenomenal voice and her age, just have a lot of respect for her

How this trick is done is all explained in this video. It's pretty simple, and pretty obviously a scam - it has little to nothing to do with a placebo effect.

And more to the point, big pharma is only indirectly related. It is akin to yellow mustard sales in relation to spicy mustard sales. If you can't get yellow mustard, then most likely spicy mustard may go up. That is an indirect relationship. Conversely, the illegality of drugs directly affects all those other groups. In addition, in other talks, he mentions big pharma as they do, as you mention, indirectly benefit from the illegality of drugs. His views, if you do more digging than just this video, are more in line with a centrist position as he does advocate high taxation which is a depart from a more libertarian philosophy.


>> ^entr0py:

>> ^Taint:
This guy must be from the right wing since he manages to make a list of who profits from illicit drugs without citing private industry!
Sure, drug dealers, the government, and terrorists, but certainly not an unkind word toward our precious corporate America!
Dow chemicals, Pfizer, Johnson & Johnson and etc etc. The companies who fill up your commercial breaks with people wandering wistfully through fields with vacant smiles on their faces. Sure you could vaporize some marijuana harmlessly to combat your crippling depression, but then we'd lose the billion dollar industry of selling you laboratory created pills to do the same thing.
Funny thing about a weed is that it takes virtually no skill to grow some of it, and thus makes a difficult product to package and sell. For Judge Gray here to make his comprehensive list without including the people who stand the MOST to lose from removing prohibition is either amazingly narrow or entirely suspect.

I never know what I should make of claims like that. Pharmaceutical companies often cherry pick the studies that show efficacy, and ignore the ones that don't, especially when it comes to anti-depressants. But I would expect pot supporters to do the same. Meta analysis of available studies doesn't seem to show any clear consensus.
It seems like the biggest problem is the lack of double-blind, placebo controlled, studies set up to prescribe marijuana to non-users as a treatment for depression. All I've ever seen are observational studies, and those can only show correlation. It would take proper experiments to begin to demonstrate causality.

>> ^Taint:

This guy must be from the right wing since he manages to make a list of who profits from illicit drugs without citing private industry!
Sure, drug dealers, the government, and terrorists, but certainly not an unkind word toward our precious corporate America!
Dow chemicals, Pfizer, Johnson & Johnson and etc etc. The companies who fill up your commercial breaks with people wandering wistfully through fields with vacant smiles on their faces. Sure you could vaporize some marijuana harmlessly to combat your crippling depression, but then we'd lose the billion dollar industry of selling you laboratory created pills to do the same thing.
Funny thing about a weed is that it takes virtually no skill to grow some of it, and thus makes a difficult product to package and sell. For Judge Gray here to make his comprehensive list without including the people who stand the MOST to lose from removing prohibition is either amazingly narrow or entirely suspect.


I never know what I should make of claims like that. Pharmaceutical companies often cherry pick the studies that show efficacy, and ignore the ones that don't, especially when it comes to anti-depressants. But I would expect pot supporters to do the same. Meta analysis of available studies doesn't seem to show any clear consensus.

It seems like the biggest problem is the lack of double-blind, placebo controlled, studies set up to prescribe marijuana to non-users as a treatment for depression. All I've ever seen are observational studies, and those can only show correlation. It would take proper experiments to begin to demonstrate causality.

I'm completely fascinated by the placebo effect.